Reaction time with in a supply chain relies directly on an organisations ability use the data that is being collected by operations. Management needs near real time decisions support systems and processes to understand the impact of every decisions in order to achieve maximum output at the lowest possible costs. New service offerings / products are abundant and challenge every level of the supply chain. We believe a three tier approach, resulting in increased control and ultimately savings, can keep organisations agile in adapting to the changes that will occur in the future This approach includes implementation of a well thought through strategy, proper information systems and processes and a continuous improvement culture.

The Ovations Supply Chain Team strive to develop innovative service offerings that will help our clients achieve quantifiable benefits through superior supply chain management practices.

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• Our Approach
• Our Offerings
• Our Products

Our Approach

We make use of a collaborative / partnership approach in all our engagements with our customers. This is to ensure that they receive as much value as possible from their dealings with us. Although we have very specific solutions for the supply chain community, we also specialise in opportunity and improvement identification through supply chain analysis that always keeps strategy in mind.

Significantly, our approach is one of solution development; focusing on real business requirements and then translating them into appropriate processes and technologies. When taking on new customers and projects, we always begin with a business understanding phase to ensure that we fully understand customers’ requirements and complexities. No supply chain is generic and we understand and appreciate this reality.

It  is also important to realise that a solution is not just a piece of software. Our experience has helped us develop a solution- oriented methodology that includes integration into a business on a process and technical level

 

Our Offerings

Supply chain advisory services, project and program management

In many supply chain engagements, either with service providers or software vendors, it is useful to involve a third party to assist with the project. We can fulfill this role due to our broad range of experience covering services and implementation of technology. This advisory service includes not only third party objectivity, but also assistance with implementation of continuous improvement initiatives to assist customers’ supply chain teams in development and improvement.

Supply chain governance design and implementation 

Businesses are fluid and change is constant. Staff members are moving and service providers are being changed. With each of these changes comes the dilution of knowledge and process within a business. Long term projects lose momentum or even die. Our service offering allows the detailed mapping of the core activities of a business and puts governance processes into place to ensure business continuity is maintained and explained to any new parties. This provides vital understanding as to why the supply chain operates as it does and can be “passed down” without dilution. Service provider relationships can be managed through this solution, ensuring that there is effective interaction between businesses.

Cost of service and cost of complexity models

Every business needs to understand its true cost of doing business in order to assist in key decisions. A cost to serve model will help identify areas for improvement or change as well as assist in major strategic decisions through scenario generation and comparison to the current environment. We advocate this as the next level of constructive information use, allowing businesses to fully understand the ramifications of their decisions. We have aligned ourselves with leading technology partners in terms of the technology which enables this solution.

Business process management (BPM) and electronic content management (ECM)

Supply chains are complex and involve detailed processes. Historically, supply chains have been manually operated with manual documentation and processes. While many of the tasks are manual, there is a great opportunity to automate processes and documentation, allowing for faster returns of complete documents, shorter lead times and potentially quicker cash to cash cycles. As Businesses change, merge and consolidate, they require assitance with their supply chain network design to ensure that cost effective and efficient networks are chosen.

Transportation planning and management

PlanForge is a hosted service provider for transport planning and execution solutions, leveraging economies of scale by managing multiple clients on a single transport planning infrastructure.

PlanForge is an internet based platform. Below is a high level summary of the platform functionality:

1. Transportation planning and scheduling. This includes:
1.  The receiving of “orders” (an instruction to move something from A to B)
2. Selecting available transporters and vehicles
3. Running the automated scheduler that will run optimisation algorithms to create a best fist schedule, taking  orders, resources and all constraints into account.
4. Constraints are items like delivery time windows, loading and off loading bays, vehicle restrictions at customers
2. Operations Management. This includes:
1. Haulier tender process
2. Linking into a vehicle tracking system if available to get the actual arrival and departure times at stops
3. Manually capturing the arrival and departure information if no tracking system exists
4. Warnings of exceptions if no information is captured
5. Reporting on key performance indicators such as delivery on time, utilisation and turnaround time
3. Financial Management. This includes:
1. Account payable rate maintenance. It can handle may different tariff structures, such as flat rates or rate per kilometre or ton etc
2. Accounts receivable rate maintenance.
• Proof of delivery work flow management including age analysis and document scanning and visibility
• Profitability analysis
1. Reporting visibility Clients, Hauliers, Sites and planning all have web visibility to the same information at the same time. Clients can see their service levels and costs, hauliers can see what work has been assigned to them and what POD’s are outstanding and sites can gain visibility of the load plans and what their expected ETA’s are. The whole platform is user access controlled. i.e. one haulier cannot see another’s information
2. Network design

As businesses change, merge or consolidate, they require assistance with their supply chain network design to ensure that cost effective and efficient networks are chosen.

 

Our Products

Our products are the solutions we provide in our service offerings. These solutions are focused on the PlanForge planning platform.